BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss — Makayla Ward will never forget the moment it happened.
"I got a call from my boyfriend and I just hear people screaming in the background," she said. "And all I hear is DD's dead."
Six students were shot at a prom after party in Bay St. Louis early Sunday morning. De'Arresi 'DD' Smith and Haeleigh Stamper were killed.
Police say all six victims were between the ages of 15 and 18 years old.
"All I can think about is how my boyfriend feels watching his best friend get killed right in front of his face," Ward said. "And he's trying to save him when he can't.”
On Sunday, DD and Haeleigh's friends and family gathered on a Bay St. Louis pier to send them off with a balloon release.
It was as much for for the friends they lost as it was for the survivors.
"Showing support is what we need right now," DD's grandmother Jacqueline Gordon said. "Because that's like therapy, even for the kids that are here, because they know that they're not alone in this.”
Gordon says her grandson was set to graduate from Hancock High School in May. He was going to enlist in the military.
"I know a lot of people say that they children, 'He was a good boy,' but in some cases that's what it really is," she said. "He was a good kid."
Haeleigh was just 16 years old.
Her friends said she was a ray of sunshine who was always there for them — no matter what.
“She was the one who was not about violence," Sofia Dejaun said. "She was the one who was always positive. And now that spark is not there anymore."
Like every high schooler, Haeleigh was looking forward to the future and life after school.
"She was so excited to graduate," Haeliegh's friend MacKenzie Conway
said. "She told me how excited she was for her future career and now she can't live it anymore. And it's heartbreaking.”
The shooting happened just after midnight on Sunday, April 30, on Old Blue Meadow Road. Police arrested the suspected shooter, 19-year-old Cameron Everett Brand, at his home in Pass Christian. He's currently being held on $3 million bond.
"It was a mass shooting," Gordon said. "He shot six children. And he just opened up on them. They didn't even know it was coming.”
Now high school students with the rest of their lives ahead of them will have to figure out how to live with loss.
GoFundMe Pages have been established to help cover the funeral costs for De'Arresi 'DD' Smith and Haeleigh Stamper's families.
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